CONNECT Prayer Guide: Day 23

“Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Matthew 22:37-39 (NLT)

CHALLENGE

My prayer challenge today is that we will take people outside of our circle of favoured people more serious through extending them compassion, grace and love.

PREPARATION

Praise God for who He is

Confess your sinfulness and need for cleansing

Allow His Spirit to draw you near

Listen as He speaks to you

REQUESTS

Show God your love through obedience to Him.

Ask God to give you a strong desire to spend time with Him each day.

Ask God to continue to reveal different ways for the people of Westheights to serve their surrounding community. And thank God that He has already used Westheights to make an impact on people’s lives.

THANKSGIVING

Thank God for hearing you.

Trust that God is at work to accomplish His will.

OPTIONAL READINGS

James 2:8-12

LIFE STORY

During Jesus’ time, there was a great debate that took place about which commandment was the most important of all. In His response to the Pharisees, Jesus focused on His follower’s ethics and the importance of loving God and then neighbor as being the most essential of all the commandments. Jesus’ pointed response summed up various crucial scriptures from the Old Testament law while providing a general principle for his followers to live their life by.

Significantly, I filed an important thought from a Christian leadership book that challenged me and still challenges me today from a spiritual perspective. The essence of the thought was this: “But real leaders never forget that every person—even the naggers, the weak, the overambitious—every person deserves to be taken seriously.”

As I reflected on this quotation, I remember that the Holy Spirit brought specific people to my mind from work, the church and the community. In the early morning, the Holy Spirit convicted me that I need to take certain people outside my circle of influence more seriously because not only can these people add value to my life but God may use me to impact their life.

Throughout Matthew’s gospel, Jesus challenged His followers to demonstrate real love through extending themselves outside of their circle of favored people. I think Jesus truly understood that there were too many people in the community that needed to be affirmed or listened to that were consistently being overlooked.